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Construction Site Monitoring

Activities such as blasting or pile driving are known to create vibrations that could potentially damage nearby homes, buildings, sewer lines or other structures. Construction activities like blasting can also cause air overpressure which produces a force of air. This force of air can set off car alarms and damage windows. Even when these activities are performed under best case scenarios, they can cause concern to neighboring building and home owners. Understandably, when china cabinets rattle or car alarms go off, people are often lead to believe that their property is being damaged by the nearby construction activity. While the activities above can damage property, construction activities like jack hammering or even general labour can also generate enough noise to annoy and cause concern to neighbors. This can lead to formal noise complaints which can result in project suspensions and even fines. Noise levels can also be a health and safety concern for your workers.

Using monitoring equipment from Instantel, you can record and monitor vibration, air overpressure and/or noise levels on your construction site. As recorded data can be viewed almost immediately, you have the ability to adjust your construction activities before regulatory limits are exceeded or before concerns develop. Warnings and alarms can be triggered based on pre-configured trigger levels that you set, and these can be different for each job. Notifications can be sent to you, or to any party you select, and these can be viewed on computers, laptops, tablets or smartphones. An historical record of data can be maintained in order to protect you from future claims and liability.

Industry guidelines have been developed to provide safe standards for vibration, air overpressure and noise. Monitoring of construction activities that induce vibration, air overpressure or noise can be governed by local, state or federal regulatory bodies, however it can also be a best practice for construction companies to monitor activities in order to prevent project downtime due to community complaints.

The Instantel system combines a monitoring unit with a variety of sensors. Our system is scalable, as your monitoring needs change, sensors can be added or removed. If today’s job requires vibration monitoring but tomorrow’s job requires vibration and noise, simply add a noise microphone.

Our equipment is designed to withstand long-term installations and extended exposure to the conditions of a construction site. You can install Instantel monitoring equipment permanently for the length of your project. Using Instantel’s Auto Call Home™ technology and a modem connected to the monitoring unit, event reports can automatically be sent to your computer so you can analyze the data using THOR™, our desktop software, or they can be sent to our cloud-based data hosting site, Vision™.

Our proprietary Histogram Combo™ recording mode ensures that you never miss an event. With Histogram Combo mode you can monitor the job site 24 hours a day and still get reports when levels are exceeded. Your report will show you the peak vibration levels at set intervals throughout the day but it will also give you a waveform report if there are any exceedances. If your equipment is connected to a modem, the waveform events will automatically be sent using Auto Call Home, then at the end of the day your histogram events will be sent. This allows you to quickly analyze the waveform events and determine if the activities are causing the exceedance or if there is an alternative reason. Histogram Combo mode is ideal when you are monitoring activities that induce repetitive vibrations, like pile driving or dynamic compaction.

Some project requirements stipulate that project owners, regulatory authorities or other stake holders need to be kept informed of the monitoring activity and whether there are any exceedances. Instantel’s cloud-based data hosting solution, Vision, can provide 24/7 access to event data. Data recorded by your Instantel monitoring equipment can be automatically sent to Vision when the system is connected to a modem. With Vision, you can control how much or how little each person sees. If for example, you want the project owners to be able to see the events and reports but not download them and you want the regulatory body to see and download them, you can set those preferences in Vision. Vision also lets you create custom reports. You can add in event data from other sensors, like temperature or strain gauges, and show your data over the day, week or even over the entire duration of the project.

Each piece of the Instantel system is designed, manufactured and calibrated by Instantel. Every part of the system is easy to use and can be quickly configured. With Instantel, you are guaranteed reliable data that can stand up to the most extreme conditions.